Ed Wood was possibly the worst movie director in history, a judgment based on such bizarre B classics as "Glen or Glenda," about the coming out of a transsexual, and "Plan 9 From Outer Space," about aliens who resurrect corpses as proxies in a fight against the human race. These movies are really beyond bad, but their badness comes from someplace both naive and deeply strange -- which made Wood the perfect subject for a Tim Burton movie, the 1994 "Ed Wood." As played by Johnny Depp, Wood is charmingly deluded about his directing skills and tremendously attractive -- and hilarious -- in drag.

Surrounding him are similarly amusing marginal individuals, including Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), a charlatan psychic; Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray), an aspiring transsexual; Vampira (Lisa Marie), a Morticia Adams look- alike; and Tor (George "The Animal" Steele), a huge, bald wrestler. The most prominent member of Wood's eccentric circle was Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), who at the time they met was a washed-up morphine addict. The DVD was released Oct. 19.

We spoke with Landau, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as Lugosi. He got his start as a newspaper cartoonist in his native New York, then switched to acting, working in the New York theater during the '50s and also in early television. His first memorable onscreen role was the blue-eyed villain Leonard in Hitchcock's "North by Northwest." Later he was the man of many faces in TV's "Mission Impossible" before his career flatlined in the '70s and '80s. It began to show signs of life again with "Tucker: The Man and His Dreams" (1988) and "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989).

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A: I did a lot of research. I watched a lot of his movies, and I really became a fan. He wound up playing this Transylvanian vampire (on Broadway) in 1927, which caused a huge sensation in New York. Women were fainting. It was romantic. He always thought of himself as a romantic actor. He wasn't supposed to do the movie. Lon Chaney was set to do it, and then he died, so they said, "Let's get the guy who did it in New York. He knows the words." That was 1931. He wanted to play romantic leads after that, but he couldn't.

Q: Was there really a disconnection -- which is a lot of the film's humor -- between his courtliness and the profanity that came out of his mouth?

A: Initially Bela Lugosi Jr., who is an attorney in Los Angeles, had read the script prior to production and was horrified. "My father didn't use language like that. He didn't have little dogs. He had big dogs." So when the film came out he was dead set against it. Then he saw it about a year after its release and sent me a note inviting me to a club and apologized. He said I had dignified his father and that it really was an homage. I said I wanted it to be a love letter. Tim is the only person in the world who could have made this movie. And there was also a parallel. Tim had a great affection for Vincent Price. The relationship between Ed Wood and Lugosi drew a parallel. I think that was one of the things that attracted Tim to it. These two people who were from different generations and different predilections suddenly needed each other. It's almost a male love story.

Q: Speaking of parallels, you had a period in your career where you were doing work that you didn't want to be doing.

A: That's one of the reasons that Tim cast me. He knew I'd worked with Hitchcock and George Stevens and Cary Grant and Richard Burton. And he also knew I worked on films that should be turned into guitar picks, really (made by) directors who were not unlike Ed Wood. He understood that I understood that, though in my career the dull spots weren't at the end, fortunately. But I understood a man who came with hope and promise and dreams and got waylaid and became addicted to drugs and alcohol and declined. The only one who would hire Lugosi at the end was Ed Wood. Paid him a thousand dollars, which was a fraction of what he had made before. I actually visited the homes he lived in. He wound up in a tiny little flat off of Hollywood Boulevard, within walking distance of a liquor store. Tragic, really.

Q: Was your daughter in the film?

A: My daughter Juliet played the brunette. She's very talented. She's a member of the Actors Studio and has done a lot of theater. Tim cast her in it from a reading she gave.

Q: He cast the movie in the same way Ed Wood might have, casting people he knew. Burton cast his girlfriend at the time.

A: His girlfriend Lisa Marie was in everything he did for a long time, until they broke up. Tim liked working with Johnny Depp. Johnny was wonderful. I always say this is a male love story, and it takes two to tango.